Surveillance: The conservative backlash

last updated 8 January 2015

Guess who’s now complaining about intrusive government surveillance of potential terrorists? said Greg Miller in the Chicago Tribune. It’s not Muslims. It’s not liberals. It’s conservatives. The Department of Homeland Security has distributed an intelligence assessment to local law-enforcement officials warning of a “resurgence of right-wing extremist groups” in response to the election of an African-American president. The report specifically warns that “disgruntled military veterans” returning from Iraq and Afghanistan might be recruited by these hate groups to “carry out violence,” citing Timothy McVeigh, the anti-government Gulf War veteran who was convicted of killing 168 in the Oklahoma City bombing. When that report surfaced on the Internet, congressional Republicans and many other conservatives reacted with outrage, accusing the Obama administration of demonizing the Right and stereotyping military veterans as seething, traumatized psychopaths.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the vast, right-wing conspiracy is back, said Jonah Goldberg in National Review Online. The report’s premise is that “the Right is full of whack-jobs, hatemongers, and killers, and if we don’t remain vigilant, bad things will happen.” The only trouble is that there’s no real evidence to support this “nakedly ideological” slander. The report claims that 19 recent war vets have joined the “extremist movement”—that, out of 1.4 million who’ve served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clearly, the report’s real purpose is to “delegitimize” opposition to White House policies, said the Orange County, Calif., Register in an editorial. By specifically pointing an accusing finger at groups that support gun rights and oppose abortion and immigration, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security is conflating “legitimate dissent” with “dangerous activity.”

Gee, if you have nothing to hide, why all the paranoia? asked Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com. That’s what conservatives said when civil libertarians railed against the Bush administration’s insistence that it could “eavesdrop on telephone calls and read the e-mails of American citizens without warrants.” Thanks to the Right’s vigorous support, federal agencies routinely engaged in domestic spying not only on Muslims but on environmentalists, animal-rights activists, and anti-war groups. But now these authoritarians have “suddenly rediscovered their fear of the federal government.” It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it? “When you cheer on a Surveillance State, you have no grounds to complain when it turns its eyes on you.”